The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

Google+ social network runs into first privacy issue

Despite a promise of privacy, the first potential problem with Google+ has been spotted.

Google's latest stab at a social network lets you categorize the people you know into different circles, so you can share with your friends what you might not want to share with your family.

The young social nework, however, has a feature that lets you reshare what someone posts. By letting you reshare, the post goes beyond the circle or circles it was intended to be seen by. This loophole was first spotted by the Financial Times.

Google, which suffered a privacy ordeal when it launched its previous social network, Buzz, said in a blog post this week that the service is still in limited trial and also said users "may find some rough edges."

"We're actively listening to feedback from our testers," Google said in a statement. "Prior to launching the product, we may make adjustments to the system in response to this feedback."

Google+, which launched Tuesday, requires an invitation from an existing user to access it. After "insane demand" for the service, though, the tech company has frozen the ability to invite users.

For now, Google+ users can disable resharing by clicking on a button that appears as soon as a post is published, but there is not a way to universally shut off the feature.